Sense of Adventure

Yep. How anti-Pythagorean of me. (Or not; although as is so often the case, the “debunking” on the linked-to site seems to rely largely on flat assertion. Meanwhile the whole “favism“ thing, claiming Pythagoras’ supposed injunctions against beans were meant to avoid bad medical reactions, strikes me as pretty post facto, mapping modern outlooks onto ancient beliefs, like attributing all vampire legends to porphyria.)

So … where was I? If “digression” ever becomes a marketable skill, Bill Gates will be doing my laundry (I was going to say “windows,” but we all know how that turned out, don’t we?)

Anyway … had a rough night last night, losing sleep to attacks by various forms of the Fear, now fortunately rare but rough when it hits. As a result I slept way late. I was wondering what to eat for my late lunch/super-late breakfast when I realized I wanted beans.

I know. I’m as surprised as you are.

So I went and chopped up some onion, dumped it into a can of black beans, and heated that on the stove. Then I defrosted me a Kosher hot dog and heated that inside a low-carb tortilla. Out of mad inspiration I added the beans’n'onions, creating a sort of weird impromptu burrito.

While the first bite was a disappointment, it actually turned out pretty well. YMMV, as always. And as a side I had some walnuts, making this small meal SuperFood-intensive. Also low on starch and not liable to cause much glycemic loading.

For some time now I’ve tried to reduce my intake of starches and things which would spike my GL (which is a much more useful indicator than glycemic index.) It’s a good way to lose weight as well as head off all kinds of potential nasty health complications. For more information I strongly urge you to read The Glycemic-Load Diet by Rob Thompson. Especially if you have diabetes or think you probably wouldn’t like to.

Indeed it’s often occurred to me to start a blog devoted to the concept called La Vida Low-Starch to share what I learn, from research and doing (which is to say, “cooking and eating.”) Which I might yet.

But what that’ll require, honestly, is, uhh, a little more application. By which I mean “any.” What with one thing or another I’ve been letting things slide, kinda. Cue Random Excuse Generator. (We knew we’d find one of these online, yes?)

So I decided to try to exert a modicum of control before I turned into even more of a long-haired, pink Latino duffel bag than I already am, which is way too much of one, by the way. I’m not going all the way back to Atkins yet, but it could come to that: great for quick weight loss, hard to sustain.

The real sticking point in cutting out the starches has been breakfast. Straight-up eggs’n'meat just hasn’t appealed to me lately. And while the low-carb torties are lifesavers in terms of coping with starch cravings, they have just enough of a bitter taste for me not to find them a welcoming morning food. Even when my “morning” comes, uh, mid-afternoon.

And while walnuts are great for fulfilling the minimum daily Crunchy Food Group requirement, as opposed to, say, potato chips, they don’t strike me as that breakfasty either. Although I admit that in the past - you may want to skip this if you’ve an active gag reflex - I’ve enjoyed breakfasting on them with smoked salmon, and olives. Go figure.

Any suggestions anybody wants to whip my way as to no-starch breakfasts, please hit me with ‘em. It occurs to me I might think about cantaloupe and watermelon, especially with the season upon us. And also blueberries, although these tend to cost the Earth. Then again, these days, what doesn’t?

Meanwhile, for tonight I’ll have oven-roasted chicken with my homemade low-carb barbecue sauce, which I adapted from Dana Carpender’s (why hasn’t she renamed herself Carbender? I always want to call her that anyway) invaluable 500 Low-Carb Recipes. The adaptation mainly consisted of doubling the garlic from one clove to two - big fizz - and also changing a teaspoon of that dust-flavored generic red stuff sold as “chili powder” to a tablespoon of green chile powder, which is a very great thing indeed. (Not that I added it: the powder itself. Dried green chile is pretty useful too. If you, y’know, like that sort of thing.)

Moreover, because I found from the fact that some little bits of onion actually survived that I liked having a bit of texture to my sauce, about 2/3rds through the cooking I toss in a third of a container of chopped green chile as well, so I can feel a bit of that crunch between my teeth as well. It makes it spicy and flavorful yet not terribly hot. If you’re me. Anyway, I like it quite a lot. If there’s any demand I’ll post the whole recipe.

Meanwhile … well, there are worse things to crave than beans. In fact, most of them.

Tags: diet, health, la vida low-starch, Me, pink Latino duffel bag, superfoods

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.